Rebuilding the US as a Strong Manufacturing Hub

One of the biggest question in the current global industrial market is how to revive the US manufacturing sector? The president-elect Trump in his campaigns promised to rewrite trade policies in order to make the country more competitive and bring back factory jobs. He has quite expressive in showing criticisms on U.S.-based companies, such as Carrier that are planning to outsource their requirements.

Throughout his campaign, trump frequently targeted Apple, which is the most valuable corporation globally. He reluctantly challenged Apple to build its iPhones in the country rather than in China. According to some economists, the difficulty with luring the manufacturing industry back to the US is the lack supply chain. As a matter of fact, several essential electronic components like flat panel displays have never been manufactured in large scale quantities in the country.

Most of the components that go into an iPhone are not manufactured in the US. So investment by Apple or Foxconn in setting up assembly lines will not necessarily mean that the components of the phone being manufactured in the country. Moreover, building the component factories will consume a healthy amount of time and will cost a whole lot of fortune. It is quite unlikely for the US to develop a global supply chain as Trump has suggested.

Subsequently the question of what kinds of jobs would come up in the US. As in recent years, jobs that have been shifted to offshore sites are proving to be more economical for tech firms. The US workforce no longer looks up to those types of jobs. For instance, Motorola’s plans to build the MotoX models in Texas was an unsuccessful attempt as people did not want this kind of work, although, they were good paying jobs. However, Apple does make its Mac Pro desktop in Austin, Texas. When tech giants like Apple launches its new model the supply chain should be strong enough to shift massive amounts of products in a short period of time.